(Note: Posted late, long after the fires are finally contained…
I am running behind on posts and images shared.)

How is it that something so destructive and terrifying
inspired me to produce a beautiful ink painting?

And yet, it did.
Watching places I lived, ate, socialized, and worked burn broke my heart.
I could not look away, could not turn it off.
I had to know what was happening, and lost days of work.

A quote I wrote down during the watching,
“Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”

That quote got me in the gut.

In the end I found my brushstrokes with the ink beautiful, detailed images below.
This was direct painting with inks, browns and oranges and yellows,
from Robert Oster and Birmingham.

The image above was based loosely upon a video of one of the streets;
I captured the image in a still screen shot.

My journal entries, if you want to try and read them:

Mark Peter (photographer) posted an image he took of a neighborhood
that burned, and it inspired the sketch below.

Having lived through a Malibu fire, I was struck back then by
what burned and what was left untouched.
Of course, the blue VW Bus amidst the char and rubble says it all.
The van belongs to Preston Martin.

I hope Mark Peter does not find it and want me to take it down.
I tried to get a hold of him for permission, but no response.

This one was sketched loosely in ink, then I used inks and watercolors.

☾